Location: Home > Art, Architecture & Photography > Tremain, Rose > The Road Home

The Road Home

Author: Rose Tremain
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł7.99~~
Buy New: Ł2.97
You Save: Ł5.02 (63%)

New (27) Used (6) from Ł2.65

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

19 reviews
Sales Rank: 11

Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.9 x 1

ISBN: 0099478463
EAN: 9780099478461
ASIN: 0099478463

Publication Date: June 12, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - The Road Home
•	Paperback - Road Home, The
•	Hardcover - The Road Home

Similar Items:

•	The Outcast
•	The Forgotten Garden
•	East of the Sun
•	The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
•	The Memory Garden

Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

The road to salvation (7/10) August 19, 2008
Rose Tremain's Orange Prize-winning `The Road Home` is a compassionate if somewhat conventional novel about a migrant worker from Eastern Europe who seeks a job in England to provide money for his family. Opening with a quote from The Grapes of Wrath, `The Road Home' is a contemporary take on the Steinbeck paradigm, depicting a new reality affecting thousands of people from poorer parts of Europe. As for many for whom an expanded EU offers hope to make a better life, Tremain's protagonist Lev heads for London. A 43 year old widower, Lev is forced to take his chances in the UK when work dries up in his town. A combination of the kindness of stangers and hard work give him the opportunity to save his family, who face destitution due to plans to build a dam that would flood his village.

It took me a while to warm to the protagonist, since he seemed more of a notional, idealised emigrant than a real person. Earnest, widowed, moral, and conveniently attractive, he seemed a bit too romanticised for my liking. But as the story develops, and we are afforded a little access to his memory, a more complex and tangible portait emerges: Lev's jealousy of a local beaurocrat, with whom he suspects his wife had an affair, has an aura of violence about it; and he has a couple of rages in the novel ("... that old anger of mine") that cross the line.

`Heart-warming' is not an adjective I'd normally use to describe the novels I like, but the sense of progress and optimism in `The Road Home' is infectious and moving without being excessivly sentimental. Tremain constructs her narrative with a deft economy indicative of her tenure teaching creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Sometmes, it feels a little too careful, the peaks and troughs of Lev's fortune mapped out a little too neatly. Also I found the novel's insistence of the humanity of the poor, and the general superficiality of the privileged, lacked subtlety. The London art circles Lev is forced to confront (during his romance with a social-climbing English colleague) are easy targets: predictably shallow and pretentious. That Lev can't relate to their wry remarks, or the crude metaphors apparent at the theatre and in the artworks he is shown, plays to the romanticised notion of the emigrant as earthy and authentic, untainted by cosmopolitan cynicism and wastefulness.

`The Road Home' engaged me most in the kitchen at GK Ashe, a restaurant that offers Lev his first proper job - washing dishes - but also a sense of direction and ultimately salvation. His initiation into the the catering hierachy is as compellingly told as his ignominous exit from it is palpably catastrophic. At first nicknamed `Nurse' to reflect his duty to keep things stringently clean, he describes "... the hot water, the grandeur of the steel surfaces, the fierceness of of the rinse-faucet ... the chefs hurled down mixing bowls, strainers, knives, stock pans, whisks and chopping boards". Compared to two other novels with depictions of kitchen life - Orwell's `Down and Out in Paris and London', springs to mind, as does one narrative thread in Kiran Desai's `The Inheritance of Loss` - the cleanliness and precision is almost surgical. Whereas in Desai's novel the kitchen is a hopeless dead-end for the immigrant underclass in New York, in `The Road Home' it briefly provides Lev a surrogate family with a brusque, patriachal boss. The meritocratic fair-play of the kitchen makes much more sense to Lev than the allegorical theatre and artworks his English girlfrien urges him to embrace.

A compelling narrative, then, but `The Road Home' lacks for me a tangible outsider's view of London. As a Londoner but now relocated to France, my home city becomes stranger and stranger each time I visist: increasingly transient, chaotic. I wanted to immerse myself in London as seen through the eyes of a stranger. Surely such a capital city would make a more profound impression (either positive or negative) on someone who had spent their entire life in rural Eastern Europe. Here Tremain's descriptive talents don't seem quite up to the task of conveying the awe and alienation you would expect. Contemporary Britain could be a fascinating literary canvas, but many authors seem to shirk from the task of capturing it's essence in the same way that American writers have long endeavoured to with their own nation. Blake Morrison did a fairly good job on `South of the River`, but I yearn to see something on the scale of Updike's Rabbit series, for example, written about the UK.

5 out of 5 stars

My first Rose Tremain - what a find! August 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Though the name has always been familiar to me, the author's work hasn't - I guess I've just never 'bumped into' one before. And how excited I now am to know I have her whole back catalogue to immerse myself in.

Lev,the Eastwern Eurpoean immigrant whose story this is, is an instantly engaging hero, and if you weren't captivated and rooting for him from the very first page then you must have a hard heart indeed. What a fine writer Tremain is; every little word, every observation, every line of dialogue, just perfect. So much insight into the human experience, and such an assured way of storytelling. Flawless. Now then. Which Tremain to read next? Suggestions from Tremain fans would be most welcome via my profile page!!!

4 out of 5 stars

Hugely Enjoyable August 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Engrossing, fascinating, well written and absorbing. Believable, catchy characters coupled with a very realistic and believable plot.

I thoroghly enjoyed this book. Buy it now and read it.

5 out of 5 stars

Faultless Tremain explores 'The Immigrant's Tale' August 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Deliberate Chaucerian echo in the title! Tremain tells the story of an Eastern European migrant in the UK, and though it is a story of one particular individual, she lays bare something universal, with compassion, tenderness, understanding and humour. As several readers have commented, she encourages us to look underneath 'the stereotype' and see the unique individual, each with his/her own story, at the heart of every easy categorisation or stereotype.

In many ways the whole book is a study of what it means to be an outsider, and how England appears from that perspective. We are a nation which not only has historically given home to many migrants, but also often regards them with deep suspicion.

Tremain warmly observes a whole raft of migrants from other cultures, from our nearest neighbour - Ireland, to newer migrants from across the world. One of her many strengths is to remind us of the potential in everyone. There are very few 'villains' in this book - except, curiously, the metropolitan 'arty set' (whom Tremain is in some ways a part of!) who are here seen as self-obsessed, superficial and hollow. She champions the 'little men and women'; I suppose in a wide sense, she is a 'romantic novelist', in that she celebrates love, in all its guises, whether the almost unremarked small acts of kindness one stranger might show to another, or the power of sexual romance.

She is a superb storyteller, and also superb at the actual craft of writing, but without ever being self-consciously 'showy' about this

4 out of 5 stars

Spoiler alert! July 30, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

I had read one of Rose Tremain's other novels, 'Restoration' previously and loved it, so decided to try this latest one despite the fact that the premises of the two novels were very different. I wasn't disappointed, this story engaged me right from the first page and I actually read it in just two sittings, unable to put it down.

I can't comment on the accuracies or otherwise of Lev's home country as I am boringly and quintessentially English, but seeing England through Lev's eyes made me feel as though mine had been opened a bit more, which to me isn't a bad thing. Lev's friendships, especially with Christy and Lydia, were heartwarming and they all had back stories of their own which I found fascinating.

Minor criticisms for me were Lev's "rape" of Sophie; maybe just me but I didn't understand quite why this occurred, and I share a previous reviewer's feeling that if he was strong enough for this, why he could not fight off the 12 year-old muggers later in the story. That part just seemed a little inconsistent to me.

I'm also interested that so many other reviewers have remarked on the feelgood ending of the book. I liked the ending but wouldn't really describe it as feelgood - yes, Lev opens his restaurant but he doesn't get the girl or really win over his mother, plus his hometown does disappear in the end and Lydia stops speaking to him.

For me this was just a simple portrayal of humanity with many characters of different flaws and strengths, as we all have. Tremain's ability to make me care and root for these characters is really admirable and I'll be seeking out more of her books....any recommendations would be welcome!